Desire, Not Greed
The Novel in Short: After graduating from university with a degree in business, Dustin has a problem. He needs to figure out a way to break through the confines that the world has built for him. The confines of middling employment opportunities, family expectations, and the small imaginations of others. Luckily, he's not alone. With his monkey sidekick, Dustin braves the hazards of the real world, demonstrating his own unique brand of hippy entrepreneurship.
Advice on Greed:
Greed is not good. In fact, almost all greed is vile shit.
The Truth about Greed:
Greed is a way of avoiding desire. It’s the projection of desire onto paper and metal.
The Good, Good Advice about Greed:
Don't use greed to avoid desire. Desire that is Real is the best thing in the world. Follow desire.
*
Greed, they said, was good. Gordon Gekko was a cock -- not someone to be emulated. But I'm not a greedy man, at least not in the way most people think about greed. I'm not some megalomaniac idiot (every day except Tuesdays; Ego-trip Tuesdays where every ego-trip comes with a free mojito). My conscience is not diseased and dying. I don't wish death to the poor. No, I'm a businessman with a heart. The only kind of businessman in my book. What ails me is that people have lost sight of value, the Real of human desire.
These days (the future, not 2004), I have assets exceeding (OMITTED) dollars, yet I refuse to use MBAs, consultants, or any other of the pseudoscientists, witchdoctors, and snake oil salesmen that pass for professionals. They are insects eating away at the souls of those who provide Real value in the world.
I don't want your money for this book. I want you to find value in your life. I want you to do great things and feel Realer things. I want you to avoid greed like the plague, but always be open to desire. I want you to be successful in business the way I am -- in thinking about the desires of others, in providing for them.
A British friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (think of him as a slightly dodgier version of Richard Branson but in political consulting), said to me at a pub once: "Greed is gluttony, a self installed force feeding mechanism that bloats you with more and more and more till your liver bursts. What pleasure is there in greed? The duck never eats its own ate. Now desire is different. Desire is the gourmands delectation. The absolute, perfect exactitude of what people lust after is what you most need to know, what they see behind their eyes, what they ache for, get wet for, cry out for. And then you provide it for them. At a price."
Now, I doubt I can get more quotable than that, but I’ll try.
So, here is Gordon Gekko's shitty speech from “Wall Street” played in reverse.
Let's call him Reverse-Gordon Gekko.
Reverse-Gordon Gekko:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not here to shower you with the shitty political rhetoric you've been fed on for nearly two decades now. This shitty rhetoric plays on negative fantasies of fear of decline and lost masculinity.
When I listen to it in passing, it seems like some middle-aged man's obsession with his underperforming cock. Every word an admission that he’s afraid he won't be able to get it up. He hears that one out of five men fails to get an erection and ingests a bottle full of Viagra, then he wonders why the world looks at him funny.
Well, Senators, the reason the world can't stop staring at us is that we've been parading around with a chemically induced super-erection when we should have been doing good in the world.
When we needed desire, we settled for some branded pharmaceutical. Our cheating has become so habitual, we hardly question it. We cheated desire, and thus, we cheated ourselves.
We've been worried about trade and fiscal deficits, without worrying about deficits in common sense, virtue, skill, and decency. We'll listen to any blowhard with a chemically induced erection and megaphone because our paranoia has made us think that "Greed" is good.
In other words, the same principle of action that would get a toddler kicked out of pre-school is the foundation for our abundance, an abundance of stupidity and crap.
America, with its chemically induced super-erection, needs to stop picking on the kid who gives up his dollar to the poor boy in class who can't afford his lunch. That thoughtful kid knows more about Real desire than the other idiots. Even though that kid may not have ever lacked a dollar for lunch, he can at least imagine hunger.
He's not an empathetic idiot -- by the way, an empathetic idiot, someone who doesn’t care about the desire of others, is another word for sociopath. You know, like Hannibal Lecter.
So, to every greed-espousing sociopath that calls him or herself a true capitalist and walks around with their chemically-induced super-erection, I say to you: Stop eating the face of American capitalism with a side order of fava beans and a bottle of Chianti. And for the sake of America, go back to pre-school.
The point is that Desire is the Real good. Real. Human. Desire. For those who know Real desire, nothing that is human is alien to them. Virtue, hard work, and business -- Real business -- these things come naturally.
Desire works. Virtue works. Empathy works.
Empathy clarifies, shines through, and makes the business of human desire possible.
Desire, in all of its forms -- a desire for life, love, knowledge, companionship -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
Money has and always shall be an elixir for human enterprises, nothing more.
I should know, I am human. And nothing that is human is foreign to me.
And desire -- you mark my words -- Real desire, will not only save the growing population of chemically induced mega-erect morons in this worlds, but that other malfunctioning human enterprise called the USA.
Thank you very much. And don't worry about the erection I just got from this speech. That's not chemically-induced. I didn’t cheat. It's the Real thing.
Advice on Greed:
Greed is not good. In fact, almost all greed is vile shit.
The Truth about Greed:
Greed is a way of avoiding desire. It’s the projection of desire onto paper and metal.
The Good, Good Advice about Greed:
Don't use greed to avoid desire. Desire that is Real is the best thing in the world. Follow desire.
*
Greed, they said, was good. Gordon Gekko was a cock -- not someone to be emulated. But I'm not a greedy man, at least not in the way most people think about greed. I'm not some megalomaniac idiot (every day except Tuesdays; Ego-trip Tuesdays where every ego-trip comes with a free mojito). My conscience is not diseased and dying. I don't wish death to the poor. No, I'm a businessman with a heart. The only kind of businessman in my book. What ails me is that people have lost sight of value, the Real of human desire.
These days (the future, not 2004), I have assets exceeding (OMITTED) dollars, yet I refuse to use MBAs, consultants, or any other of the pseudoscientists, witchdoctors, and snake oil salesmen that pass for professionals. They are insects eating away at the souls of those who provide Real value in the world.
I don't want your money for this book. I want you to find value in your life. I want you to do great things and feel Realer things. I want you to avoid greed like the plague, but always be open to desire. I want you to be successful in business the way I am -- in thinking about the desires of others, in providing for them.
A British friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (think of him as a slightly dodgier version of Richard Branson but in political consulting), said to me at a pub once: "Greed is gluttony, a self installed force feeding mechanism that bloats you with more and more and more till your liver bursts. What pleasure is there in greed? The duck never eats its own ate. Now desire is different. Desire is the gourmands delectation. The absolute, perfect exactitude of what people lust after is what you most need to know, what they see behind their eyes, what they ache for, get wet for, cry out for. And then you provide it for them. At a price."
Now, I doubt I can get more quotable than that, but I’ll try.
So, here is Gordon Gekko's shitty speech from “Wall Street” played in reverse.
Let's call him Reverse-Gordon Gekko.
Reverse-Gordon Gekko:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not here to shower you with the shitty political rhetoric you've been fed on for nearly two decades now. This shitty rhetoric plays on negative fantasies of fear of decline and lost masculinity.
When I listen to it in passing, it seems like some middle-aged man's obsession with his underperforming cock. Every word an admission that he’s afraid he won't be able to get it up. He hears that one out of five men fails to get an erection and ingests a bottle full of Viagra, then he wonders why the world looks at him funny.
Well, Senators, the reason the world can't stop staring at us is that we've been parading around with a chemically induced super-erection when we should have been doing good in the world.
When we needed desire, we settled for some branded pharmaceutical. Our cheating has become so habitual, we hardly question it. We cheated desire, and thus, we cheated ourselves.
We've been worried about trade and fiscal deficits, without worrying about deficits in common sense, virtue, skill, and decency. We'll listen to any blowhard with a chemically induced erection and megaphone because our paranoia has made us think that "Greed" is good.
In other words, the same principle of action that would get a toddler kicked out of pre-school is the foundation for our abundance, an abundance of stupidity and crap.
America, with its chemically induced super-erection, needs to stop picking on the kid who gives up his dollar to the poor boy in class who can't afford his lunch. That thoughtful kid knows more about Real desire than the other idiots. Even though that kid may not have ever lacked a dollar for lunch, he can at least imagine hunger.
He's not an empathetic idiot -- by the way, an empathetic idiot, someone who doesn’t care about the desire of others, is another word for sociopath. You know, like Hannibal Lecter.
So, to every greed-espousing sociopath that calls him or herself a true capitalist and walks around with their chemically-induced super-erection, I say to you: Stop eating the face of American capitalism with a side order of fava beans and a bottle of Chianti. And for the sake of America, go back to pre-school.
The point is that Desire is the Real good. Real. Human. Desire. For those who know Real desire, nothing that is human is alien to them. Virtue, hard work, and business -- Real business -- these things come naturally.
Desire works. Virtue works. Empathy works.
Empathy clarifies, shines through, and makes the business of human desire possible.
Desire, in all of its forms -- a desire for life, love, knowledge, companionship -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
Money has and always shall be an elixir for human enterprises, nothing more.
I should know, I am human. And nothing that is human is foreign to me.
And desire -- you mark my words -- Real desire, will not only save the growing population of chemically induced mega-erect morons in this worlds, but that other malfunctioning human enterprise called the USA.
Thank you very much. And don't worry about the erection I just got from this speech. That's not chemically-induced. I didn’t cheat. It's the Real thing.
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